Big Blue shows off fastest graphene transistor

IBM has been showing off its latest graphene transistor that can execute 155 billion cycles per second. It is about 50 percent faster than previous experimental transistors.

The new transistor has a cut-off frequency of 155GHz. The previous one could manage 100GHz and it was shown off last year.

Top Big Blue boffin Yu-Ming Lin said that the research also shows that high-performance, graphene-based transistors can be produced at low cost using standard semiconductor manufacturing processes. In other words commercial production of graphene chips is not far away.

Graphene is a single-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms structured in a hexagonal honeycomb form. It could be used for high-performance RF (radio frequency) transistors.

Electrons move faster on graphene transistors than conventional transistors, which enables faster data transfers. Unfortunately they are not ideal for PCs yet, because they do not have the on-off ratio required for digital switching operations. But it is good at processing analog signals.